A few thoughts about Films,Games, Television amongst other things.

A Normal Lost Phone – Review

A Normal Lost Phone is a mobile game available on the apple app store and the google play store that tells a story using an interesting premise. You have found a phone, its unlocked and you can access some areas of it right away. You don’t know if it’s been lost, stole or thrown away but your job is to find out what has happened.

It’s a clever piece of storytelling that uses the secret pleasure of going through someone else’s phone as its pages rather than a traditional book.

You find yourself with access to some areas of the phone to start with other areas locked through passcodes known only to the phones owner. To uncover the truth, you must access these parts of the phone by going through other parts looking for clues as to what the codes could be.

While you do this however a story tapestry starts to form, through reading text messages, e-mails, web chats etc. you steadily build a picture of the protagonists’ life and it’s enough to simply say that more is going on than first appears.

I will not spoil any aspects of the plot but it is certainly a strong one that surprised and intrigued me as I bit by bit discovered more of the phone owner’s life.

A Normal Lost phone finds a way to combine the feeling of being nosy with that of piecing together a mystery like a detective scanning for evidence. With each new little crumb, you find, you can’t resist digging just a little deeper.

Supporting this read and click play style is a very good and immersive selection of original music found in the music section of the phone, click play and the songs will play in the background while you continue to search through the other sections of the phone.

Another smart supporting feature is the art style used for the ‘photos’ on the phone and visible on other moments. The images are not of real people but are a series of hand drawn pictures in the place of photo’s. This allows you to be surprised by some things you find and avoids any immediate prejudice or judgment of any character based solely on what they look like. Matching different drawn images of people with names and a different image of the same person is not difficult but it does require a small amount of work leading to a revelatory feeling when you do work out who is who and what they are doing in those images. Putting context to the pictures was one of the most rewarding aspects of the game for me, the photos are available from the start but you won’t know what is going on in them until later on.

A Normal Lost Phone is a smart, intriguing and enjoyable game that fits perfectly on your phone. It’s well suited to short boosts of play, instead of checking your favourite social network, spend 2 minutes reading a few more texts or e-mails and learn a little bit more.

The game will surprise you with its story in a good way that really will make you think, and is well supported by creative writing, original music and a clever choice in art style.

A must have game for your phone.

9/10

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Have you played ‘A Normal Lost Phone’? What did you think? or are you going to give it a go? Let me know in the comments below. Or on our Facebook Group, or Twitter, or mail us on the Contact Page.